History brought to life

By Nick Gevock - 09/17/2008

Montana may be a long way from New England, but the two areas share a history linked by hard-working settlers who came West.

Now, thanks to an effort by historians and educators, high school students from both areas will share a history lesson in the people from New England who came seeking fortune in Alder Gulch, said Bill Peterson, curator of interpretation for the Montana Heritage Commission in Virginia City.

The commission was recently named one of 11 recipients nationwide of a Save Our History grant, which is sponsored by The History Channel. The project to bring together students from the two areas was selected from more than 500 entries from throughout the country. The money will be used to give high school students in the three states the chance to do original historic research on the many New Englanders who came to Alder Gulch.

"A lot of times these are done with buildings and stuff, but we did this with preservation and history," Peterson said of the program. "It's a hands-on project with school kids to link them with preservation." The program began two years ago, when 30 teachers from New England came to study the mining history of Alder Gulch. Peterson said they got those teachers not only reading and seeing the history of the area, but also had them experience what life was like in the 1860s, the earliest days of mining in Alder Gulch.

"We immersed them in live history," Peterson said. "They learned mining and sluicing, how to cook for each other on wood stoves … they took it back to their classrooms and shared what they knew." Now the students are going to get involved by doing historic research on the people who came.

Ennis High School students in Jay Fredrickson's class will work with the historic records available here, while students in Claremont, N.H., and Hartland, Vt., will do their own research there.

The people who left the Connecticut River Valley were escaping what had become tough times economically, said Sarah Rooker, a historian with nonprofit group Flow of History in Hartland, which is working on the project with several schools.

"Vermont's big sheep industry was starting to fail and Vermont was going into something of an economic decline," she said. "Many families left for greener pastures, and of course there was the lure of gold." She said students there will use original material in county and city records, as well as local historical societies, to learn about the people who came to Montana. She said even as a professional historian she's confident there's a lot to be learned because the students will dig into the history of their community.

"We're going to be able to compare what some of the economics were in the community as compared to Montana, such as what could you buy, what was available in both places, how much did it cost?" she said. "They're doing difficult, real historic research." The Montana students, in turn, will report back to them with what they've discovered through research, Peterson said.

His proposal for the project was well thought out and unique because it brought together students from different areas while they tackled a real research project, said Libby O'Connell, chief historian for The History Channel.

Americans are accustomed to the idea that immigrants from foreign countries import their own cultural ways," she said.

"But rarely do we recognize the impact of a different local culture brought by Eastern settlers moving westward." — Reporter Nick Gevock may be reached at nick.gevock@mtstandard.com